Christie's proposal would give private companies unprecedented control of failing N.J. public schools

Ed Murray/The Star-LedgerGov. Chris Christie speaks at a press conference in this May file photo.

TRENTON — Private companies may soon gain unprecedented control of five failing New Jersey public schools if a proposal unveiled last week by Gov. Chris Christie is approved by the Legislature.

Fewer than 70 public schools across the country are managed privately and many struggle because of restrictive local regulations and feuds between the companies and the communities they serve, education experts said.

"The track record of public school takeover is ambiguous. Really, none of the companies has had remarkable success," said Rick Hess, director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank.

Christie’s proposal would invite non-profit and for-profit companies to participate in the five-year pilot program. Local school boards selected through an application process would have two options — ask the private company to manage a failed school or authorize the company to launch a new one.

Acting Education Commissioner Christopher Cerf said the governor’s proposed legislation allows for both options because it is much harder to turn around a failed school than it is to start a new school.

"It is notoriously difficult to turn schools around with a change in management," Cerf said. "This is one of the strongest arguments for closure and replacement."

Cerf conceded that many contracts nationwide between school districts and private companies have been canceled in the past two decades, however, he said this does not mean the partnerships were a failure.

"There is a very strong progressive impulse that anything that is for profit or not traditional is suspect," said Cerf, adding that teachers’ unions often oppose the arrangements.

Even mentioning the words "profit" or "business" in the same sentence as "education" or "public school" can yield "radioactive" political results, said Andrew Rotherham, founder of Bellweather Education, a non-profit group that supports low-income students.

"If New Jersey moves forward with this proposal, people should remain aware of all the risks and not expect miracles," Rotherham said. "This is a debate long on ideology and short on empirical proof that it works."

In December 2010, the National Education Policy Center found that 47.8 percent of students at schools run by for-profit companies met federal education standards. The figure is lower for students attending schools run by non-profits. Just 22.2 percent of those students met the standards.

The Wichita Public Schools in Kansas is one of dozens of districts across the country that held contracts with school management companies that were later canceled. Edison Schools began doing business with Wichita in 1995, but by 2003, the company lost its contract to run four schools there.

Poor test scores, declining enrollment and high teacher turnover were among the concerns that led the Wichita school board to cancel the contracts, said Susan Arensman, a spokesperson for the district. The move saved the district half a million dollars, she said.

"We were not seeing from Edison what we were promised," Arensman said. "The couple of schools they controlled were producing the same results as our other schools. Some of our schools were actually doing better."

John Chubb, a fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, said school management companies can only succeed when given the latitude to implement their models — something that doesn’t happen often because of the fervor takeovers stir among skeptical teachers and parents.

Chubb helped found Edison Schools, now known as EdisonLearning, in the early 1990s. He saw the for-profit company through its boom when it ran 150 schools to its bust. Today, Edison manages seventeen public schools.

"If for-profit entities like Edison operate in an environment where they are free to do what needs to be done for them to be successful, you will see results," Chubb said. "If they are compromised, the results will be mixed."

The Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP) ran into similar troubles in 2005, when it tried to take over the Cole Middle School in Denver.

KIPP is well known for its success running high-performing charter schools in urban areas, but even it could not turn around Cole, a public school, said Gary Miron, an education professor at Western Michigan University who helped author the National Education Policy Center reports.

Part of the problem, Miron said, was that in the takeover, KIPP had to let students enroll at any time during the school year, unlike their charter schools where students can only come at the start of the year.

"Students leaving and students coming mid-year is disruptive," Miron said. "KIPP allowed it there because they had to, and the experiment failed. KIPP no longer takes over schools for that reason."

Even if Christie can push his school transformation proposal through the Legislature, his gubernatorial successor could undue his work a few years from now.

"New Jersey will have to convince providers in demand that this state is a place they should want to come do business," said Hess, of the American Enterprise Institute. "They will want to feel they have a real chance to succeed here, that this new law won’t be reversed and the ground yanked out from under them."